Rouen, Notre-Dame, nave and aisle.
Photograph: Clarence Ward
Collection. Courtesy of Oberlin
College.
transept has three bays with aisles and a chapel on the east side of each transept arm. The
choir has five bays with ambulatory, two small radiating chapels, and a central chapel
dedicated to the Virgin. The three-story elevation is elegantly proportioned, especially in
the choir. Stained-glass windows of the 13th century are in the ambulatory, and 14th-
century windows representing archbishops and saints of Rouen are in the Virgin Chapel.
The cathedral houses tombs of several dukes of Normandy and the 15th-century duke of
Bedford. The south-transept chapel is dedicated to Jeanne d’Arc.
The imposing west façade has three sculpted portals surmounted by gables, galleries,
and a rose window. The left and right portals dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St.
Stephen contain 13th-century sculpture; the Tree of Jesse in the central-portal tympanum
dates from the 16th century. The Tour Saint-Romain with its Romanesque base on the
north and the 15th-century Tour de Beurre on the south flank the façade. The transept
portals, the Portail des Libraires on the north and the Portail de la Calende on the south,
have interesting sculpture, especially the early 14th-century tympanum on the south
transept representing the Passion.
The Benedictine abbey church dedicated to St. Ouen, a Merovingian bishop of Rouen,
replaced an earlier Ro
The Encyclopedia 1555